Extra Magic Hour

[Wrightfamily]

We are staying at Pop for our May Disney vacation. This is our first time staying at a Disney Resort. Is it best to take advantage of the Extra Magic Hour and attend that park for the whole day or stay away. I didn't know if this made the park extemely busy. We are not doing the park hopper so we will only go to one park each day. Also we are going for the week of Memorial day (which also is one of my son's Birthday ) I was wondering if the parks are really packed for this holiday week.

Thanks and Merry Christmas!!!

Misty

 

[karliebug]

I highly recommend you add the park hopper if you can swing it. Here's why. If you go to EMH in the morning it will be great but will soon fill up with people like yourselves who do not hop. By noon it will be the most crowded park. If you have a hopper you can enjoy that morning hour, getting a lot done. Hit a few more attractions after the park officially opens and then high tail it out of there as it becomes crowded. We usually have lunch and head back to our resort for a swim/rest break and then go to a different park for the evening. If it is evening extra hours we do the opposite.

 

[jenseib]

I do believe Memorial weekend will be quite busy.

We have gone in March the last 2 years with no park hoppers. The first day we get there is a Sunday and we get in usually late afternoon. So we check in and then head over to MK which has late hours then. We stay very late and totally enjoyed it. The first year I kind of planned our days to go on the days the parks were opened later. But with a little one we were so tired, we never stayed later. And the parks were very pakced. So the second trip we did the MK the first day (during the EMH time it was a breeze to get on rides) and then we avoided all EMH days, and it went much smoother. We would never do morning ones, as DD sleeps in, so night ones would be for us. But thats a long day for a little one and a DH too. LOL!
So unless you know for usre you want to use those hours, then I would avoid those days, or get a park hopper. We just don;t find we have enough time to hop around for the money it costs, so we don't go that route.

 

[tzolkin]

We went over Memorial Day last year-- 9 days with the weekend right in the middle of our trip. There was definitely a difference in crowds from earlier in the week, but it wasn't too awful. (We just decided last night that we're going to plan another trip for that same week!)

I'm not sure how old your kids are, but we absolutely needed the park hoppers. My kids were 9, 4, and almost 2. We usually got up and went to EMH park until 11-12. We went back to the hotel to nap (yes, we ALL took a nap) and then went back to a different park from about 5-8:30 or so. For us, it was extremely hot in the afternoon, so I don't think we could have stayed in the park all day without being miserable even if we didn't want to nap. We did EMH at MK 3 times during our trip and honestly got more done than we would have the whole day if we had gone later in the afternoon. We did every ride on our must-do list with almost no wait, but many of these rides had 70-90 minute waits in the afternoon.

For us, the park hoppers are definitely worth it. We went to two parks every day of our trip. We went to AK one day and it was so packed we had to leave. We would have been really disappointed if we just had to sit at the hotel the rest of the day. Also my kids loved taking the monorail from MK to Epcot. One day we walked into MK just to get their haircut & confettied, got on the monorail, and went over to Epcot. We didn't, however, make any ADRs, so we were really open to go wherever we wanted. If we had all of our days planned out maybe we wouldn't have used them as much. I've seen many people say that they do not need/use them. You can always wait to add them on when you get there.